


Lightning

by Effluvium



Series: Emotional Excuses [2]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Peter, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 18:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12659091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Effluvium/pseuds/Effluvium
Summary: It hit too close to home for Tony.  It was beginning to kick in, to hurt and he didn't know where he was running to.





	Lightning

**Author's Note:**

> _Emotional Excuses_ is, in fact, a series and will continue in chronological order (starting with _Power in Thought_ )

Sharp. That was the first thought that came to his mind when he decided to sit down. Also that it hit too close to home, and that he hated deja vu.

There’s something strange about the room. It isn’t white, not like he’s used to; its got some strangeness in the dark walls and the gloomy blue stripes and the yellow lights that don’t shine like they’re supposed to. There’s noise in the quiet, too - it’s in the beeping and the dinging and the staticky discontent in the air. 

It hit too close, made his heart reverberate in painful familiarity, and he just couldn’t stand it any longer.

“How’re you feeling, Peter?”

There was no answer. He wasn’t expecting one.

“Oh I’m fine, Mr. Stark, just a little bit of shrapnel in the chest, y’know, the usual.”

Shrapnel. That word. It was second, in all this. Sharp, Shrapnel -

“Are you breathing easy?” His glasses were off his face so he didn’t have to see the the pale eyelids too closely. “Oh, yeah, this catheter’s doing fine. I don’t know if I am, though.”

It’s November. There’s stories that he reads, sometimes - a lot - that talk of rain upon rain upon the _absolute downpour of rain_. They’re always cold, always gloomy, always ready to shake your reality, to take it down in one foul swoop like that of a blunt knife, always bruising, hurting, neverending.

“How’s your healing? Feeling any better?”

Sharp, Shrapnel -

“I wouldn’t have this catheter if I were, Mr. Stark.”

He’d always hated being called that, but after a while it just stopped committing significantly to their relationship. He was turning into a revised version of Howard, he was turning into a mini version of Tony, and everything was falling falling falling -

Stopping.

Sharp, Shrapnel, Stopping -

“Why were you there anyway, Peter?”

Stopping -

“It’s a parking garage.” 

Shrapnel -

“A parking garage?”

Sharp -

“I didn’t want them to feel like I did, Mr. Stark. So I had to get them all out, every last one of them.”

He didn’t know when he started to care so much. It grew with the ferry, with the hyper-extension of his muscles and the eventual surgery and rehabilitation that made the soreness and pain subside for good. After that, it was a blur. 

Nothing was wrong.

“You broke a lot of bones, Peter.” Rain battered against the window all of a sudden, making the billionaire jump in his [cold, hard, unhomely, uncomfortable] seat, hit his elbow on the fake wood of the armrest. “I know. I usually can’t feel them, though. I don’t think my body is healing. Nothing’s working.”

Working. Sharp, Shrapnel, Stopping, Working -

“We’ll get it working. It’s just going to take you a bit longer to pick yourself back up, Peter, so… don’t move.”

Move.

Sharp, Shrapnel, Stopping, Working, Move -

Moving.

_Move._

He had to move.

He was flying out the doors before he knew it, the gasps of monetized nurses buzzing behind him in familiarity - _Sharp_ \- as he sprinted through the fields. His pants were riding up uncomfortably but he kept going, he kept sprinting, running, bolting through the rain. It wasn’t touching him. He was too fast.

_Shrapnel._

He stopped, then. His legs were ready to move, but his mind was slow, too sluggish to convince them to carry him onward. He breathed heavily, loudly, consistently as he tried to drown out the sounds of breathlessness and frantic beeping and static, and then that static _Stopping_ -

The rain was touching him now, soaking through his suit like saliva to cotton candy. The ten cups of black coffee from the prior night were kicking in, fueling his adrenaline and grasping at his body heat, making him shake from a cold that wasn’t really there. It was a warm November, something he knew Peter loved.

The cold scared him.

The sky was dark, turning, churning in an anger unmatched to his own. It was grey, dark grey, light grey, and the sun couldn’t make its way through the thick clouds that seemed to be so incredibly awake at so early in the morning. Three-twenty-four.

Three-twenty-five.

Three-twenty-six.

Three-twenty - _Stopping_.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there for, shivering and wet and lost. There’s a mist along with the downpour, a cold one that sits on him with the weight of a building, that crushes his bones and crumbles his thoughts and completely eliminates his relief from the night before.

_“He’ll make it.”_

_“Can I see him?”_

_“Are you family?”_

Move.

_“I’m the closest thing he’s got to it.”_

_Move_. 

_“We need family, sir. Not dramatics.”_

_“His parents are dead.”_

_“Aunts? Uncles? Grandparents?”_

And he’s running again. He’s running and sprinting and running from all the problems, all the implications, all the news that he’s going to have to tell Peter when he wakes up.

_“His Aunt died in the garage.”_

“I didn’t want them to feel like I did, Mr. Stark. So I had to get them all out, every last one of them.”

_“Oh, I’m so sorry.”_

_“And you knew that.”_

Tony knew she knew. It was that gut feeling and underlying parental instinct and billionaire-egotistical-genius because he knew her.

_“Pardon?”_

_“You know his name, you’ve gone through his files, and his Aunt died in the room two doors down from him. You knew, so let me in and don’t talk to me again.”_

Thunder. It was thundering, the thought of it all, the sick reality that they were facing. It was horrifying, really, just how quickly everything changes, just how amazingly fast it all goes by, just how much you never get to say because of the dark in the sky and the barriers around you.

Sharp, Shrapnel, Stopping, Working, Move, LIGHTNING -

_“Do you ever write, Mr. Stark?”_

No.

_“MJ does. She doesn’t let me read them, though.”_

Then how do you know?

_“I just know she does, y’know? She draws, too.”_

Is she any good?

_“Pretty amazing, really. “_

Have you seen any of those?

_“No. But she draws circles, a lot. And writes long words in different fonts.”_

Circles?

_“I don’t know why. You should probably ask her.”_

I don’t know MJ.

_“I hope you do, one day.”_

Yeah?

_“Yeah. She scares me, though.”_

Why’s that?

_“She doesn’t react to anything.”_

Emotionless?

_“Farthest thing from it.”_

But you just said -

_“Poetic. I think she’s making me more poetic, Mr. Stark. Kind of scary, that influence.”_

Maybe you’re just growing up, Peter.

_“I think I’ve already grown, Mr. Stark.”_

Peter, you’re fifteen.

_“Sixteen actually. You get that wrong, a lot.”_

_“Did you know I was the only one who believed you? Everyone else thought I was crazy for believing a fourteen-year-old kid.”_ It’s the dad in me, not liking where anything is going.

_“You’d make a pretty great dad, Mr. Stark.”_

Tony jumps, a low ringing piercing the thoughts, the internal dialogue, the memories. It’s his phone, and there’s a ridiculous, healthy face with brown eyes and brown hair and a wide smile and white  
teeth and -

“Hello?”

Sharp, Shrapnel, Stopping, Working, Move, LIGHTNING, Pale, Pale, Pale Pale Pale Pale Pale -

“He’s looking for you, Tony.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _Chaos Walking_ (by Patrick Ness) is such an amazing series. I strongly recommend it!


End file.
